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Celebrating the Women of Impact

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Opinion

Editorial

 

In 2019, BusinessWest created a new recognition program, one to recognize a large and significant constituency, and one whose accomplishments often went unrecognized.

We thought about calling it Women in Business, but then we decided this didn’t fit the bill, as we didn’t want to recognize only individuals’ accomplishments in the business world.

Rather, we wanted to celebrate women of achievement, women who stand out, women who go far beyond what’s in their job description, women who are making a difference. So a name came about naturally: Women of Impact.

The plan was to honor those who excel in their chosen field, or fields, as the case may be, but who are also giving back in the community, who inspire others around them, who serve as mentors to others and especially younger women, and who, as one of our honorees is fond of saying, ‘show up.’

We’ve done that, and this year’s class continues that tradition, as the stories that begin on page W4 clearly show. They are:

• Tara Brewster, vice president of Business Development and director of Philanthropy at Greenfield Savings Bank. Her passion for connecting the community and boosting nonprofits is reflected in both her career and her activities outside the bank as she asks, “what are we here for if not to make a difference?”

• Ayanna Crawford, president of AC Consulting and Media Services. Her work spans her consulting business, numerous nonprofit boards, serving the public as chief of staff to state Rep. Orlando Ramos, and a flourishing organization called Take the Mic, which gives both young people and adults the confidence they need to be public speakers.

• Tracy Friedenberg, executive director of Bacon Wilson, P.C. Early on, she decided that she wanted to serve in roles where she could help team members thrive and drive organizational success. She’s been described as “a visionary leader, compassionate mentor, and an extraordinary human being” who is actively involved in her community.

• Rania Kfuri, vice president of Philanthropy, Sales, and Marketing at Glenmeadow. Showing up has been her credo, and the continuation of a pattern set by several generations of her extended family. Showing up means excelling at work, giving back to the community, mentoring others, literally showing up at events, and convening others to help solve regional problems.

• Chelsea Kline, executive director of Cancer Connection. She understood the value of this “lean, scrappy” nonprofit when her mother accessed its services two decades ago, and today, she and her team successfully build community support for a wide array of programs that bring calm, courage, and even fun to people dealing with the harshest challenge of their lives.

• Angelina Ramirez, CEO of Stavros Center for Independent Living. For the past 35 years, she has been dedicated to this critical nonprofit that helps people with disabilities secure resources and equipment, stay in their homes, access education and job opportunities, and otherwise achieve the kind of live they desire to live.

• Amanda Sanderson, executive director of the Resilience Center of Franklin County. Inspired by her mother’s resiliency in overcoming physical and sexual abuse, she has dedicated her life to leading nonprofits, which she calls the ‘glue’ of our society, and constantly raising the bar when it comes to serving clients and acting as a convener and collaborator.

• Sarah Rose Stack, lecturer of Public Relations at UMass Amherst — just the latest chapter in a compelling story. Inspired by music teachers, she overcame poverty in childhood to excel in music and the arts, and they remain a big part of who she is. Another big part is being a mentor and the kind of teacher who can change a life, as her teachers changed hers.

We at BusinessWest congratulate the Women of Impact class of 2025 and are grateful for their powerful example and inspiring stories.

Here Come the COVID Vaccines — but Hurdles Remain

By
Business of Aging

Shot in the Arm

As COVID-19 vaccines begin to roll off production lines, many questions remain — about how quickly they’ll reach the general public, about long-term efficacy and safety, about how many Americans will actually want one.

But on one issue, there is no doubt, Dr. Andrew Artenstein said.

“This is a spectacular achievement just to get where we’ve gotten so far, and I think we should appreciate that,” the chief physician executive and chief academic officer at Baystate Health told BusinessWest. “It’s been a whirlwind, and I mean that in a good way.”

Everyone in healthcare understands the upside — the dramatic promise — of a vaccine as the COVID-19 pandemic enters its 10th month.

“A vaccine is a major component of getting on the other side of this,” Artenstein added. “It’s not the only component, but it’s an important and necessary piece of shortening the duration of this pandemic and possibly preventing future waves.”

With Pfizer gaining emergency-use authorization from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to begin distributing its vaccine — and Moderna expected to do the same — the Baker-Polito administration announced allocation and distribution plans for the first round of vaccine shipments to Massachusetts, expected to begin around Dec. 15. The state’s first shipment of 59,475 doses of the Pfizer vaccine was ordered from the federal government and will be delivered directly to 21 hospitals across eight counties, as well as to the Department of Public Health immunization lab.

Doses will then be redistributed for access to 74 hospitals across all 14 counties for frontline medical workers. Another 40,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine will be allocated to the Federal Pharmacy Program to begin vaccinating staff and residents of skilled-nursing facilities and assisted-living residences in Massachusetts.

In all, Massachusetts is expecting 300,000 doses of vaccines from both Pfizer and Moderna to be delivered by the end of December. Both vaccines require two doses administered three to four weeks apart. While all delivery dates and quantities are subject to change due to ongoing federal approval and allocation, state leaders expect to receive and distribute more than 2 million doses to priority population groups by the end of March.

Dr. Andrew Artenstein

Dr. Andrew Artenstein says the public should not let down their guard when it comes to masking and social distancing while they wait for the vaccine.

“It does make perfect sense,” Artenstein said of the prioritization plans, which reflect judgments on the federal level and ensure delivery to groups like healthcare workers, first responders, the elderly, and people with co-morbidities before the rest of the public. In the case of seniors, for example, “it’s not that they’re more likely to get the virus, necessarily, but they’re more likely to die if they get infected. They do worse.”

Meanwhile, he added, healthcare workers have a greater risk of coronavirus exposure than most other people.

“We’ve been inundated — inundated — with calls from other groups that they want the vaccine,” he said, placing heavy emphasis on that word. “But the truth is, it isn’t available for the general population now, and it may be several months before it is.”

Artenstein, an infectious-disease expert who founded and directed the Center for Biodefense and Emerging Pathogens at Brown University for more than a decade before arriving at Baystate, has been one of the public faces locally of the fight against COVID-19, and he was careful to temper optimism about a vaccine with a reality check on the timeline — and what people need to do in the meantime.

“A vaccine may eventually be the answer, but it’s only going to be part of the solution for the next six to 12 months, assuming we continue to get vaccines that are safe and effective. It’s going to take a while — even if all goes well — before we get enough immunity in the population to really put an end to this thing.

“In the meantime,” he went on, “we would benefit greatly by continuing to push the classic ways to interrupt transmission: masks, distancing, avoiding gatherings. All those things will continue to help us because, even after we start vaccinating parts of the population, it will take the better part of the year to roll it out to everyone, and we need to continue to interrupt transmission.”

Jessica Collins, executive director of the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts, agreed, even though it can be a challenge getting through to people suffering from ‘pandemic fatigue,’ who feel isolated and weary of all the changes in their lives over the past year.

“I’m sorry people are tired,” she said. “But the basic messaging isn’t hard — wear a mask, wash your hands, and don’t be inside spaces with a mask off with people you don’t know. I do think the holidays have created a tremendous sense of urgency to remind people again, especially with students leaving schools and coming back to their homes.”

Hopefully, health leaders say, vaccines will put a definitive end to the crisis. But that day is still far off, Collins added. “People need to wait it out.”

 

Making a List, Checking It Twice

In announcing the Commonwealth’s vaccine-distribution plans, Gov. Charlie Baker noted that Massachusetts goes further than national recommendations by prioritizing all workers in the healthcare environment, not only providers, but also food-service, maintenance, and other facility workers. Similarly, home health workers, including personal-care attendants, are prioritized on the list, recognizing their important role providing services to vulnerable individuals and the fact that they often reside in communities highly affected by COVID-19.

Jessica Collins

Jessica Collins

“Messaging is critical, and the messengers are critical. Hopefully, we’ll have good results, and more people will be willing to take it.”

Phase one of vaccine distribution — which, as noted, includes healthcare-facility workers; police, fire, and ambulance workers; congregate-care settings, including not only senior-living facilities, but shelters and jails; and home-based healthcare workers — is expected to last into February. Phase two, expected to run from February to April, will prioritize individuals with co-morbidities that put them at higher risk for COVID-19 complications; all adults over age 65; as well as workers in the fields of early education, K-12 education, transit, grocery, utility, food and agriculture, sanitation, public works, and public health.

Phase three, expected to follow in April or May, will see the vaccine more widely available to the general public.

Baker’s announcement noted that vaccines go through extensive testing, more than any pharmaceuticals, including extensive testing in clinical trials. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approves the vaccine, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which will make its recommendation for use, must ensure any vaccine is both safe and effective for the public before approval and distribution.

All this is necessary for emergency-use authorization of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, Artenstein said, but the testing process is far from over, and long-term effects won’t be known until, well, the long term.

The emergency-use ruling “is not licensure, but allows the immediate use of the vaccine pending more information that leads to licensure down the road — because we’re in a pandemic,” he noted, adding that he’s optimistic about further testing, as trials so far have shown about 95% effectiveness across all age groups, with no serious adverse effects.

“The data I’ve seen is pretty impressive for efficacy and safety of the vaccine. And there were around 40,000 people in the trial, so that’s a good sample,” he said — enough to start delivering some immunity to high-risk populations now.

The question, especially as distribution widens in the spring, is how many Americans will actually take the vaccine. Collins said the Public Health Institute has conducted preliminary outreach and found some skepticism and mistrust of the government when it comes to vaccine advice, especially in communities of color.

“In order to counteract that, we have been trying to find and lift up messengers in the community who are trusted people, whether faith-based leaders or other trusted messengers, to counteract skepticism and fear about getting vaccines, whether the flu vaccine or the COVID-19 vaccine,” Collins told BusinessWest, adding that the institute held a virtual town-hall event two days before Thanksgiving and asked 10 such messengers to share their wisdom on prevention measures.

Artenstein breaks down vaccine attitudes into three distinct groups of people — two of which are those champing at the bit for a vaccine, and a small but robust community of anti-vaxxers who express skepticism at vaccines in general.

“Then there’s a whole middle group who could be convinced to get the vaccine, but they’re concerned about safety and effectiveness,” he explained. “It’s a risk-benefit calculation, and based on what I know about vaccines, the risk seems low, and the risk of COVID seems pretty high, especially right now, with such high rates in the community.

Hampden County, in fact, currently ranks third among Massachusetts counties for transmission rate, with more than 50 positive cases per 100,000 residents.

Typically, around 70% of people in a community — or a nation — need to be exposed, either through natural infection or a vaccine, to reach the desired herd immunity, he added. “In the U.S., that’s a big number. But the risk-benefit calculation is obvious. You’d like, over time, to have enough people willing to get the vaccine to help the general population.”

 

Anticipation and Reality

While surveys currently suggest about 60% of Americans are willing to take a COVID-19 vaccine, that number could rise higher if early results from the priority groups demonstrate both effectiveness and safety.

“The U.K. is going first, and then U.S. healthcare workers have to go — which is obviously the right thing to do — then people over 65,” Collins noted. “It’s not like the general public is being made guinea pigs. We will actually be able to see a lot of people getting the vaccine, and the companies will see the reactions.

“So, messaging is critical, and the messengers are critical,” she added. “Hopefully, we’ll have good results, and more people will be willing to take it.”

Artenstein agreed, adding that, for the group of Americans ready to line up right now, the wait may be longer than they realize, but that’s OK.

“We’re a little over our skis on this,” he said. “There’s a lot of excitement and anticipation, but it’s going to come out as more of a slow roll; there’s a manufacturing process, an approval process, and a safety process. There won’t be 300 million doses available tomorrow, and that’s hard for some folks.

“There’s going to be a lot of interest, questions, and anxiety, and rightly so,” he added. “We’re living in a very different time, and people want to move very fast. But we have to make sure we do things in the safest possible way.”

 

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

 

Let’s Tie School Funding to Results

By
Opinion

Opinion

By Tricia Canavan

United Personnel Services is a staffing company specializing in professional, information technology, and manufacturing placement throughout Massachusetts and Connecticut. We experience firsthand the impact of the achievement gap on our young people and their ability to succeed at work and in post-secondary education. We also clearly understand how these educational deficits contribute to the significant skills gap that exists between the jobs available in the Commonwealth and the qualifications of many of our residents.

Many young adults are entering the job market without the knowledge and skills needed to secure living-wage jobs, never mind the high-wage, high-potential jobs that would move them and their families on an upward trajectory. This disconnect impedes our economy, limits opportunities for future economic development, and, most importantly, is a real injustice to our kids here in Massachusetts. In our gateway cities in particular, student achievement and mastery of key skills lag behind those of their peers at a sometimes-staggering rate through elementary and high school.

Consider the fact that 72% of jobs will require a career certificate or college degree by 2020. In Springfield, 23% of our kids don’t graduate from high school in four years. Only 17% of our ninth-graders earn a post-secondary degree or credential within six years of high-school graduation, in part because many graduate unprepared for post-secondary success. For those students who do pursue higher education, a huge number require remedial classwork, wasting valuable time and financial aid on classes that don’t get them closer to a degree.

Massachusetts needs to build upon its long tradition of educational excellence to ensure that all of our kids have the education they need to pursue the good jobs that exist in Western Mass. and throughout the Commonwealth. These are jobs like nurses, advanced manufacturing machine operators, web developers, and physical therapists — all sectors with hiring demands that exceed the supply of candidates — and all jobs that provide wages beyond the region’s median income.

The disconnect between the qualifications of our young adults and the jobs our employers need filled is the reason I co-chair Springfield Business Leaders for Education and serve on the boards of directors of the Springfield Regional Chamber and Associated Industries of Massachusetts. Like so many of my colleagues throughout the state, I am deeply committed to our kids and our Commonwealth and want to be part of the solution to these urgent issues.

We know that the way communities spend state education money has a direct impact on student knowledge acquisition and achievement. It is imperative, then, that any infusion of funding is tied to results — for our kids, their futures, and the economic strength of Massachusetts. We also know that innovative reforms, such as the Springfield Empowerment Zone model that has potential to be expanded statewide, must be accompanied by renewed investment in education.

But we must be cautious as we pursue increased financial resources for our schools. Springfield public schools have received large boosts in funding before, through the introduction of federal grant programs like Race to the Top. But these infusions have not translated to sufficient progress that adequately addresses all that our students need. If we are successful in changing the current funding for our schools without using it as a leverage to do better for our kids, we will have failed.

The cost of the status quo — the achievement gap, the failure to maximize our kids’ promise, the inability of businesses to find the workers they need — is huge. Additional money needs to be used strategically, informed by data and evidence, to accomplish specific goals. We deserve to know what those goals are and whether our schools are meeting them — and, if not, why.

Tricia Canavan is president of United Personnel Services in Springfield. This article first appeared in the blog of Associated Industries of Massachusetts.